almost as good
as the virtues of an Englishman, and are far more diverting into the
bargain. You must not judge Paddy by the same standard as you apply to
John. To begin with, he has not had the advantages, and secondly,
there's an ingrained whimsicality, for which I would not exchange all
the solid imperfections of his neighbour across the Irish Channel.

You would not judge all Scotland by Glasgow, and so you should not fall
into the error of judging all Ireland by Belfast. Kerry is the jewel of
Ireland, and it is with Kerry that I have fortunately had most to do in
my life.

Whilst I am alluding to the mistake of generalising, let me point out
how erroneous it is ever, historically, to talk of Ireland as one
country. When Henry II. annexed the whole land by a confiscation more
open but not more criminal than that instigated by Mr. Gladstone, there
were four perfectly separate kingdoms in the island. Now there are four
provinces which are quite distinct, and an Ulster man, or a Munster man,
or a Connaught man, knows far more, as a rule, of England, or even
Scotland, than he does of the other three provinces of his native isle.
For one Ulster man who has been in Munster, three hundred have been to
Liverpool or Greenock, and until lately there was no railway between
Connaught and Munster, so that you had to go nearly up to Dublin to get
from one to the other.

There is much that is incomprehensible to the Englishman who comes among
us taking notes, and not the least is that no one wants his
cut-and-dried schemes of reforming what we do not wish to reform. As for
conforming to his method and rule by vestry and county council autocracy
in a methodical manner, it is utterly at variance with the national
temperament. Very often, too, the stranger falls a victim to the
Irishman's love of fun, and goes back hopelessly 'spoofed' and quite
unaware what nonsense he is talking when he lays down the law on Ireland
far from that perplexing land.

'Don't you want three acres and a cow?' asked an enthusiastic tourist
from Birmingham, soon after Mr. Jesse Collins had provided the
music-halls with the catch-phrase.

'As for the cow I would not be after saying it would not be a comfort,
but what would the pig want with so much land?' was the peasant's reply.

And that suggests an opportunity to give as my opinion that the most
practical measure England could take to benefit Ireland would be to
drain the large bogs and so improve